Scarleteen

Hello! I'm just looking to talk with others who may have dealt with some of the questions I have about faith and sexuality. I grew up in the Catholic tradition but attend Anglican services now and my faith is a big part of what makes me, me! But I do not view pre-marital sex as sinful, nor homosexuality or use of contraception. I love my faith but I also don't like feeling like there's no way to reconcile Christian faith with my views on sexuality. I have talked to clergy and religious sisters about this subject, but I'm really looking for some answers from those not directly involved in running the church. Has anyone else dealt with these questions? Any recommendations on how to reconcile these two big parts of our lives?

Hi aeChristine,

While I am not Christian myself, I know that this is an issue that can be a struggle for a lot of folks. Right now, the loudest voices and most-amplified messages in American Christianity do seem to be overwhelmingly anti-queer, anti-extramarital sex, and often anti-any expression of sexuality at all. And that can make it tough - for me at least - to remember that Christians have a really wide range of beliefs when it comes to sexuality, and that those loudest (and usually meanest) voices aren't telling the whole story.

I don't feel qualified to talk much on this from a theological standpoint, as it's not my area of expertise at all, but I have a wonderful friend who is someone I'd consider an expert on feminist, queer-friendly Christianity, and I reached out to her for some reading suggestions. She sent me several links:

Love, Joy, Feminism is written from someone with an evangelical background; she has a lot of good writing on purity culture.
Slacktivist also has some great purity culture commentary, and is fairly well-known for picking apart the Left Behind books. (He also has a collection of a LOT of lgbt-focused Christian blogs here.)
And here are two more blogs that focus on lgbt-positive content.

I know this is a LOT of reading to hand you at once, but you don't have to read it all right now; what I really want to do is show that there are a lot of kind and smart people saying really interesting things on these topics. Hopefully you'll find something here that resonates with you!

Thank you so much, I'm going to check out these links and post again tomorrow, hopefully with some answers!

Hi aeChristine,

Hope you don't mind my jumping in. The links Mo gave are a really great starting place. I wanted to add that, for a long time, I felt as you did about there not being space to reconcile faith with a lot of sex positive values. However, I've found that there are certain denominations that do share those values. The Unitarian Universalists are one, and the Quakers (at least the unprogrammed ones) both tend to be very progressive, so those might be another place to read and explore the intersection of faith and sexuality. I've also found that there are chunks of Episcopalian and Lutheran churches that tend to be pretty open as well. So I want to say that there is definitely room in the world for faith a progressive sexual values to co-exist.